The present invention generally relates to miniPACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System) or teleradiology systems, specifically to miniPACS/teleradiology systems with remote volume data processing, visualization, and multi-user conferencing capability. In our previous patent application, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/434,088, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,621,918 issued Sep. 16, 2003 we presented a miniPACS/teleradiology system with remote volume data rendering and visualization capability. The present invention is directed to additional features and enhancements of the architecture described therein.
Teleradiology is a means for electronically transmitting radiographic patient images and consultative text from one location to another. Teleradiology systems have been widely used by healthcare providers to expand the geographic and/or time coverage of their service and to efficiently utilize the time of healthcare professionals with specialty and subspecialty training and skills (e.g., radiologists). The result is improved healthcare service quality, decreased delivery time, and reduced costs.
One drawback to some existing teleradiology systems, however, is the lack of the ability for radiologists to communicate interactively with their colleagues and referring physicians from disparate locations for the purpose of consultation, education, and collaborative studies. Collaboration is especially important for studies using volumetric images, where the ability to interactively manipulate the volumetric images and simultaneously view the processed images is essential for rapid and effective communications between multiple participants involved.
There are numerous methods and systems providing multi-media network based conferencing capability. However, these methods and systems only support shared viewing of texts, documents, and videos. Furthermore, a radiology conferencing system presents unique obstacles. For example, the size of data to be transmitted could be very large and the requirement on image (picture) quality could be very high. To be clinically useful, the transmission should be interactively “on-demand” in nature. There are on-going efforts to develop radiology conferencing capabilities for the communication of two-dimensional (2D) images. However, none of these systems supports interactive communication of volumetric/three-dimensional (3D) images.
As a result, there exists a need for a miniPACS/teleradiology system with network based conferencing capability supporting synchronized distribution and viewing of interactively processed volumetric images. Further, there exists a need for an improved method and procedure for the management of multi-center trials involving volumetric images.